


fragile, broken things

by ladykestrel



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: Gen, Pre-2x01
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-11-06
Updated: 2014-11-06
Packaged: 2018-02-24 09:56:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,051
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2577308
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ladykestrel/pseuds/ladykestrel
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Tranquility can be found in the most peculiar of places.</p>
            </blockquote>





	fragile, broken things

**Author's Note:**

> Following the aftermath of Beginning of the End, Skye and Ward go down separate paths in coping with what has happened.  
> (Also known as my first shot at a Skyeward fic, yay.)

Betrayal is not like a shot to the gut. It isn’t a fatal wound you die because of. Betrayal is a knife piecing your skin, never deep enough to puncture anything, but deep enough to make your body tremble with immense pain, while you watch a person you would have once trusted with your life point a gun at you, with his fingers on the trigger.

The first few weeks are hard. Coulson once told her she wore her emotions on her sleeve, in her eyes. She tries to amend that. She tries to convert all of her feelings into sweat, and every stab of pain to her heart - she transferred to the punching bags. All of the pent up anger goes to the target that takes up a very familiar image in her mind, and whenever she closes her eyes and sees the face behind them, she lets the bullets hit the center every time.

Fitz is back. He comes to the base, and Skye’s heart shatters anew. Gone is the dorky boy that knew the atomic structure of each element she never bothered to even memorize the name of. Gone is the genius boy who could solve a problem before she could even blink. In his place is a broken man, devout of everything that once defined him. Leo Fitz is changed, scattered in pieces and left to pick them up and glue them together by himself. With Simmons gone, he changes more. Isolates himself from the team, spends every waking moment in the Playground’s lab. He talks to himself a lot, which has never been anything the old Fitz has done. But this isn’t the old Fitz – that person sits at the bottom of the ocean.

Watching Fitz come undone, Skye’s veins boil with more anger, more intense than before. She feels the adrenalin coursing through her as she listens to her teammate struggle with finding the correct words. Her vision turns to the color of blood and she has to turn away, head to the training room, in order to restore some of her common sense.

Hitting and kicking at the bag as hard as she possibly can, Skye floods all her rage into the physical aspect of throwing solid punches.

It takes a few hours before she is finally calm enough to go back to the common area.

Skye knows whose fault this all is. She knows exactly where she needs to direct the blame – in the facility’s basement, the guarded door that no one wants to go near of. Inside, a monster lay, unpunished for the thing he has done.

Coulson brings her reports every odd day. When he’s not busy rebuilding S.H.I.E.L.D. that is. The agency’s director pays frequent visits to the basement. Skye is always the first one he goes to when he emerges.

“He still refuses to talk to anybody but you,” Coulson tells her.

“He’s not going to be talking much then.”

After every remark like that, Coulson leaves. He is exasperated, it’s clear by the way he holds himself, but he doesn’t push further. He simply lets Skye breathe and move at her own pace. She knows there will come a time when she’ll have to go down there herself. Unless they want to wave a white flag and admit defeat, let Hydra win, all the intel she can emerge from there with will be of upmost importance. Someday soon, she will have to descend down those stairs. It doesn’t mean Skye has to be happy about it.

One day, Skye overhears a conversation that almost makes her curious. Coulson is talking to some of the Playground’s medical team. He mentions something about sedation and Vault D. She hides behind a corner, inching as close as she can without being detected in order to make out the words better. Anticipation grows inside her stomach until Skye reminds herself that she does not care.

She turns around and leaves, not wanting to hear more of the conversation.

***

Grant Ward is unraveling.

He is fraying at the edges, the cloth of him soon to be torn apart completely.

Grant Ward is lost.

Despite the four walls he stares at during the time his eyes are open, the former specialist does not feel as if he knows where he is, who he is.

He only knows he’s lost. He only wants to lose himself more.

The only solace, Grant Ward finds in pain. In the promise of an ending.

It starts with a button, then a sheet of paper. Everything gets confiscated, taken away as if to torture him more by not allowing him the one thing he wants.

Darkness.

It is where he belongs, after all.

There are other ways to find it, however.

Grant Ward watches the wall opposite him, as if through a lens, or through the eyes of someone else. Anticipation grows, vibrating through every cell in his body, urging him forward. Promises whisper in his ear, pushing him over the edge.

The burst of pain is instant. The world fades and darkness arrives. With it comes relief.

He wakes up hours later, with a drumming in his head. It thumps, thumps, thumps to the beat of his pulsating heart.

The pain is present, but dulled. It is a numb kind of sensation, there but not quite. It is just enough for him to notice it, but not enough to make a difference.

Disappointment courses through his veins, boils in his blood. With each pump, it reaches his heart then retracts, only to return again a beat later. Alongside it, there is determination. The certainty that he will not fail again.

Grant Ward does not quit.

When someone finally decides to do something, people come down to his cage. The barrier falls. Long laboratory coats and the smell of antiseptics surround him.

He hasn’t even noticed he’s been resisting. His body thrashes as hands try to subdue him.

He’s pinned on the bed he sleeps on. There’s a stab of pain, just a pinch of it. Then the hands release their hold on him. Calm fills him, weaves its vines around his thoughts. A tranquil, quiet sort of darkness beckons him.

Grant Ward is at peace for the first time in a long while.


End file.
